The populist leftwinger Miguel Arraes, who has died aged 88, was the last heavyweight of the political generation in power in Brazil before the 1964 military coup. Although of national importance in the construction of the modern Brazilian left, and considered a saint in Brazil's dusty northeast, Arraes was essentially a regional politician.

He is most closely identified with the state of Pernambuco, where he was elected governor three times - once before the dictatorship and twice, 25 years later, when civilian government was restored. In 1962 - four decades before the Pernambucan Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva became the country's first working-class president - Arraes's inaugural term in the governor's palace was a historic reference point for Brazilian socialism.

One of the most explosive issues in Brazilian politics is the redistribution of land titles. Arraes defended agrarian reform by throwing his support behind the Peasant Leagues, which were a precursor to today's Landless Rural Workers Movement, a direct action group which invades unproductive land.

With a geography similar to that of most of the northeastern states, Pernambuco has a tiny prosperous coastal strip with vast semi-arid interior, plagued by drought and intense poverty. Arraes initiated grand projects to distribute electricity across the entire state - for which peasants, using electricity for the first time, began to credit him with supernatural powers. When he went up country, voters would ask him to bring rain and, for some, to touch him would bring them good luck and health for their families.

Arraes supported a literacy programme developed by the famous Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire and made sure that rural workers would get paid the minimum wage.

In a time of many strikes and pressure by workers' movements all over Brazil, Arraes won national respect as a conciliator between left and right. But then, in 1964, the military seized power. After refusing to resign, Arraes was taken directly into custody from the governor's palace in Recife and spent 11 months in prison in the tiny Atlantic archipelago of Fernando de Noronha.

Algeria granted him asylum, and he lived in Algiers for 14 years, coming home in 1979, when the military regime declared an amnesty. On his return he joined the opposition party, the Democratic Brazilian Movement (MDB) and helped found its successor, the PMDB, for which he was elected a member of congress in 1983. The dictatorship ended in 1985, and in 1986 he ran for the Pernambuco governorship.

His image as the state's saviour was fuelled by the television coverage of him being mobbed on the campaign trail, filmed by his son Guel, one of Brazil's most talented and successful directors. In his second four-year term as governor, however, Arraes was not the firebrand of the 1960s.

In 1990 he switched to the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) and returned to Brasilia as a congressman. Voted governor again in 1993, in his late 70s, at the end of his third term he suffered accusations of financial impropriety against him and his grandson, who was eventually absolved by the supreme court.

Although he was dominant in regional politics, Arraes failed to make much of an impact on the national scene. As a congressman he did not live up to expectations, and he was unable to use his influence to much effect in the 1989 presidential election, the first of the new democratic era. He supported three candidates as the race progressed, all of whom lost. He lost the 1998 governorship, and in 2002 he was again elected a congressman for the PSB.

For all his association with Pernambuco, Arraes was born in neighbouring Ceara. After studying law in Rio de Janeiro, he returned north, to Recife, where he worked at the Sugar and Alcohol Institute. Rising up the institute's hierarchy, he was offered the position of Pernambuco's finance secretary, which he held until 1950.

That same year he ran in his first election, gaining a seat on the state assembly. In 1959 he was elected mayor of Recife and founded the Movement of Popular Culture, a gathering of artists, intellectuals and students that aimed to improve education for the less well-off. By the time he was governor, three years later, he was already a potent symbol of the left - and an obvious target for the military when they seized power.

Arraes had eight children with his first wife, Celia de Sousa Leao, and two with his second, Madalena Fiuza.

· Miguel Arraes, politician, born December 15 1916; died August 13 2005